Time. Conferences as short as five or ten minutes
donít allow much time for work to get done. Fifteen to twenty minutes
seems like a minimal, but still effective, amount of time. Longer
conferences are justified when the assignment is lengthier and/or more
complex, or where a number of tasks are on the agenda (Williams, 1998,
pp. 96-97). At the Writing Center, sessions are usually 30 minutes long
but do run longer for long assignments.

Housekeeping. One school of thought about conferences
believes they should be infrequent, in-office conferences (Donald
Murray); another school believes conferences should be frequent,
in-class conferences (Roger Garrison). Most instructors prefer the
former; the latter usually works best with very heavy teaching loads
and in community college settings (New St. Martinís Guide to
Teaching Writing, p. 54). Conferences are usually scheduled over
two consecutive days, with quite a few more slots available than
students. Itís best to hand around a sign-up sheet and urge students
who have a lot to talk about to take two slots. E-lists or pop mail
address book lists work well for reminding students of the conference
schedule; it could also be posted on a course web site. Some teachers
ask students to submit specific questions before a conference, to write
a memo about their expectations for the conference, or to hand in a
commentary on the process they went through in writing a paper.

Purpose. The most successful conferences are focused
on a specific writing task with some kind of text from which to work.
It is important that both teacher and student read the text fully. If
at all possible, the teacher has read the text beforehand; if not,
she/he assigns the student a task to do while she/he reads the paper
(e.g., write out your thesis statement, brainstorm for additional
sources, sketch the outline of the paper, etc.). According to the New
St. Martinís Guide to Teaching Writing, conferences are most
successful when they have one of these purposes:

Agenda. John Bean recommends focusing first on
"higher-order" or "global" concerns (content, thesis, organization,
argument) because "lower-order" or "local" problems may change after
the bigger issues are addressed. Bean also recommends initially setting
an agenda with the student, but teachers may want to have their own
agenda prior to conferences (1996, pp. 226-227). Some teachers may lead
into the conference by asking for the studentís assessment of elements
of the class (perhaps even the assignment in question)óa formative
evaluation which empowers the student and gives the instructor some
feedback.

Roles. Most writers on student-teacher conferences
agree that the teacher should serve as an aide, or coach, and draw
ideas and answers out of the student with skilful questions. "If you
can teach a student to use the conference as a chance to communicate
with a supportive, informed reader, you will both relax a little and
become two writers, or perhaps a writer and a writing coach, working
together to push a draft forward and, ultimately, to improve the
studentís overall writing and reading skills" (New St. Martinís
Guide to Teaching Writing, p. 58).

Strategies.

General:

Approach the studentís text as a reader, not a writer or evaluator

Ask questions rather than make prescriptive judgments

React honestly as a reader to unclear or successful passages

Indicate areas of success as well as areas needing improvement

Let students do most of the talking

Keep questions open-ended

At the planning or invention stage of a project:

Make an idea map for brainstorming

Have student do 5 minutes of freewriting or listing on the spot

Play devilís advocate to deepen ideas

Use table of contents, indexes, online databases, LOC categories,
etc. to break up a topic and to suggest additional substantiating
material

Ask How Does Who Do What and Why (HDWDWW): create a matrix with a
column for Who, a column for Does What, and a column for Why

Use matrices (double-entry tables work well for comparison
papers) to break a topic down and list subpoints in the appropriate
cells

When first confronting the assignment, have students circle the
nouns (the topics) and the verbs (what tasks are expected)

At the first draft stage of a project:

Have student identify the thesis statement (if appropriate) and
"test" it against the last 1-2 paragraphs of the essay

Gloss each paragraph of the essay (a short phrase summarizing the
main idea or the main purpose of the paragraph)

Outline, map, or draw a tree diagram of each paragraph to
inductively discover the paperís organization

Circle cues or signal words in the draft, words that indicate a
shift in topic or a new subpoint in the argument (words like includes,
example of, furthermore, in addition, next, later, similarly, but, on
the other hand, because, therefore, finally, in conclusion)

Have student dramatize and test his/her thesis by asking
what people, institutions, nations, etc. might do in a given situation
related to the thesis

Have student read a passage aloud (or the instructor reads it)
and ask the student to summarize it in her/his own words. Transcribe
it, or have student transcribe it, and suggest that that version would
work in the draft

Ask about transitions to get student to focus on the shape of
his/her argument

At the last stages of a project:

Focus on one or two problematic paragraphs

Try minimal marking by checking lines with surface errors and get
students to identify errors

Ask students to "sayback" confusing sentences

Ask the basic question: "Who does what to whom or what?"óin other
words, who or what is the agent, what action is performed, and what is
affected by the action?

Read a passage aloud or have student read the passage aloud; mark
pauses to indicate needed or incorrect punctuation

Have students keep a double-entry error notebook, where their
recurring grammatical/mechanical errors are listed in the left column,
with "fixes" or explanations in the right column